Using social media automation can be tricky (it's supposed to be social after all). But your need for efficiency may make it necessary. From the Hubspot Blog, here are 11 social media automation mistakes marketers need to avoid.

FearAutomation can make your social media marketing more efficient and effective, if you do it right. With some pre-planning, there's no reason to be afraid of social media automation.

Too Much AutomationOveruse of social media automation is probably the most common complaint against it. Find the rate balance of updates for each of the networks in which you participate. Hubspot recommends starting with 8 tweets a day, 4 Facebook updates, 3 LinkedIn updates, and 4 Google+ updates.

Failing to Leave Room for Last Minute UpdatesUnexpected things will come up that you will want to share. Make sure your scheduled updates aren't so frequent that you can't insert timely updates.

Setting and Forgetting ItRemember that you are automating only your updates. You still have to monitor the discussion around your content and answer any questions/response.

Outsourcing without Setting ExpectationsIf you outsource your social media, make sure the agency understands your expectations for targeting, frequency and monitoring.

Robotic UpdatesSpend some time crafting your updates to infuse some personality into them.

Stale ContentGreat content that interests your audience will make the fact that you scheduled it in advance irrelevant.

Bad TimingSchedule your updates at times that make sense for your audience. And obviously, schedule time sensitive offers accordingly.

One-Size-Fits-All SchedulingEach social network has its own guidelines, tone and audience. Schedule according to the nuances of your networks.

Not Measuring ResultsTo pick the best content and update frequency, you'll need to use marketing analytics to see that performs best.

Lead nurturing is defined as consistent and targeted communication to move your leads further down the funnel. Since research also shows that social media and purchase decisions are closely linked, it follows that social media offers a natural opportunity for lead nurturing. From Hubspot, here are eight simple ways to combine your lead nurturing and social media marketing.

"Include social follow widgets in lead nurturing emails."The more points of contact you can have with your leads, the better. Talking to your leads through both email and social media gives you twice as many opportunities to expose them to content and pull them further down the sales funnel.

"Use social share modules in your emails."Give your leads the opportunity to share your content with just one click. This can help build your company's social reach while also building a more personal relationship with your leads. Research has also shown that emails with social sharing buttons have a 115% higher click-through rate than emails that don't.

"Add social calls-to-action to thank-you pages."A landing page should give viewers as many opportunities as possible to further connect with your company.

"Add social widgets in thank-you emails."The first email a lead receives from you, often a thank you or confirmation email after they've taken advantage of a free offer, is an important point of contact and should include all your social widgets. A lead that follows you on social media is more likely to see other nurturing content that will move them further down the sales funnel.

"Initiate a lead nurturing workflow when a lead mentions your company on Twitter."Integrated marketing automation can alert you when you're contacted by a lead via social media. This approach ensures leads don't fall through the cracks and utilizes multiple touchpoints.

"Utilize your employee's social media accounts."Transparency on social media is expected. Prospects want to connect to actual people online. Encourage your employees to be active on social media and share your lead nurturing content to amplify your reach. Give your company a face by making it easy for leads to connect with sales people, and even management, via social media.

"Always respond to social inquiries."Leads will often turn to social channels for feedback or questions. Unanswered inquiries will result in not only the lead probably not returning to your social channels, but also damage your company's online reputation. Closely monitor your Facebook account, Twitter mentions, LinkedIn comments, etc. to ensure that your leads are getting the attention they deserve.

"Monitor for branded terms that may indicate sales readiness."Leads use social media to perform their research. Find sales-ready leads by social monitoring for branded terms in your industry.

A marketing dashboard is a software interface for visualizing and understanding a marketing campaign. The data summarized on a dashboard can guide decision making and track progress. From Marketo, here's an infographic on how to optimize your social media dashboard.

From MarketingProfs, here are the top 5 marketing trends predicted for 2012.

Big DataThink of this as "customer interaction history". As digital information doubles every year, information about buying behavior will only increase, creating a tremendous marketing opportunity.

Marketing Automation 3.0Marketing Automation 2.0 was all about social media integration. Marketing Automation 3.0 is about the rebirth of marketing data marts and their integration into your marketing automation platform. That harnesses Big Data by creating a closed loop between your marketing automation platform and CRM systems.

Customer Intelligence"Embracing customer intelligence and making it part of their closed-loop sales-and-marketing systems will enable B2B and B2C marketers to sift through huge amounts of complex customer data to identify buying opportunities at the right time throughout the customer lifecycle."

Customer LifecyleNew marketing opportunities will be created via the application of customer intelligence to the customer lifecycle. Engage customers at the right time, with the right offer, in the way they want to buy.

Right-Time Multichannel MarketingThis will allow the monetization of social media by taking customer interactions amd making them part of customer profiles that can be contextualized to create the right offer at the right time.